Mining the Historical Record
Hello all!
Happy New Year! For my last post of 2023 I thought I would pick up where I left off with my last video: Writing a Research Paper, Step One…with Step Two: Mining the Historical Record. As it so happens, last summer I published a book called Mastering the Past: Unlocking Excellence in High School History and I talked about this very thing. Here is an excerpt…
Back in the olden times, the dark days before the Internet, historians conducted all of their primary research in the archives – usually at special collections departments in libraries at universities or in government buildings such as courthouses. This could be quite the demanding process, one would have to secure funds and allow time for travel, actually go to an archive in some city or town, take up residence in said city or town, physically go to the archive during hours of operation, and call up boxes of historical documents, sometimes organized with a clear research guide, but often not – just a mountain of papers for a historian to sift through, with the hopes that he or she might find a nugget of information revealing some glimpse of the past.
Archivists have since digitized a TON of material and made it available online. Historians still have to travel to see many collections, but the good news for you is that there is more than enough available on the Internet for a high school paper. So then, where do you find all this stuff? When my students begin any research project, I first direct them to the following digital databases, all of which are keyword searchable. Some are general and cover the broad span of United States history while others are more topic specific. Below are a few databases that free to the public and require no membership for a basic search:
- The Library of Congress – loc.gov
- American Memory – memory.loc.gov
- The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History – gilderlehrman.org
- Founders Online from the National Archive – founders.archives.gov
- New-York Historical Society Digital Collections – digitalcollections.nyhistory.org
- Chronicling America – chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
- The American Yawp Primary Source Reader – americanyawp.com/reader
- The Avalon Project – avalon.law.yale.edu
You can also simply type in a subject on your browser followed by “primary sources” and let Google do its magic. Try this: “World War II primary sources.” You’ll get tons of hits – see what I mean?
So, I’ll be posting the next steps in a few days. This should keep you busy for sure. And remember, let the research guide your conclusions, not the other way around. The key here is to remain intellectually honest! If the evidence points you in a particular direction (even one you did not anticipate…) you have to follow it!
And - if you really want the good on how to kill it in history class, get my BOOK. It’s short, easily digestible, and the price is right.
With compliments,
Keith